Fiona J. Mackintosh
Fiona J. Mackintosh was born in New Jersey to expat Brits who brought her back to the old country and raised her in a Scottish fishing village. Aged 30, after a short career in journalism in London, she went back to the US with just two suitcases and no prospects, and has lived there ever since. She became a consultant editor for the World Bank in Washington D.C. where she lives with her husband, but she goes back to visit her family in the UK every chance she gets.
Fiona is the author of The Yet Unknowing World, a flash fiction collection (published by Ad Hoc Fiction). She is a past winner of the Fish, Bath, and Reflex Flash prizes and has had flashes selected for Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2023, Best Microfiction 2019, and the 2018-19 BIFFY 50. Her short stories have been finalists in several contests including the Bristol, Galley Beggar, and the Colm Tóibín prizes. In 2016, she received an Individual Artist’s Award from Maryland State Arts Council.
Q: If you could travel back in time, which of the great writers would you like to meet and why?
A: I’d pick Virginia Woolf in a heartbeat. Not only because she was a genius but also because she seems to have been a mesmerizing conversationist, albeit formidable and inclined to quick judgments about people. I would have been terrified to meet her, but I suspect it would have been memorable.
Q: What is the least interesting part of writing for you?
A: I can’t really answer that because I love every part of it, even the headbanging part when you’re stuck and hate every word you’ve put down on the page. Which is no fun but it’s so rewarding when you manage to push through to something better.
Q: If you could teleport yourself anywhere, real or fictional, where would it be and why?
A: My hometown of Anstruther on the East Coast of Scotland where my story ‘O Voyagers’ is set. It draws me back like nowhere else and still feels like home.
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